Sep 26, 2018 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Repeating Pitches in a Melody When writing a melody, many inexperienced composers tend to overuse certain pitches, their melody kind of gets stuck at a pitch and keeps on using it over and over again. For a certain length it is okay to hover around one pitch but it...
Sep 19, 2018 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Highest pitch in a Melody One common property of many successful melodies is that the highest (and lowest) note of it only occurs once in the melody. This is a pretty essential thing in order to give it a proper dramaturgy. Also, the highest note shouldn’t be a...
Aug 22, 2018 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Rhythm of Secondary Melodic Lines When trying to find a secondary melodic line to a main melodic line (e.g. you have your main melody in the strings but want an independent horn line as well to support it) try shaping that secondary melody in a way that it moves on...
Aug 14, 2018 | Daily Film Scoring Bits, Film Scoring
Unaccompanied Melodies Unaccompanied melodies can have a fantastic effect in a movie when placed cleverly. The “lonely” instrument or section filling up the musical space has a beautiful and haunting quality and can either create an extreme intimacy which is for...
Aug 8, 2018 | Composition, Daily Film Scoring Bits
Melodic Shaping One of the things you should keep an eye on when writing music is the form of your melody. Very often, inexperienced composers fall into repeating short-breathed almost identical 2-bar phrases. While it is perfectly fine to do that once in a while and...
